In recent years there has been an increasing awareness of long term or chronic effects resulting from concussions and traumatic brain injury.
One area of intensive military research into head trauma results from the unfortunate consequences of asymmetric warfare of the twenty-first century and its wide spread use of improvised explosive devices (IED) that makes head trauma and brain injury among combatants all too common now. Another rapidly emerging area of study relates to concussions suffered in sports activities. Beginning with an awareness of chronic brain injury to boxers, this field of research quickly extended to U.S. professional football and the national football league (NFL™).
Combined with the new national push for more brain research, these seemingly disparate areas of head injury are combining into a study and search for better a understanding of how to study brain injury and the chronic after effects caused by brain injury.